“I never really cared about the politics so why would I be interested in it now? To me, theatre is the only form of freedom. I am an actor: I go to the theatre, I play a role, I go back home. That’s it” – says Hendrik Höfgen, the protagonist of a book by Klaus Mann and a movie by István Szabó after learning that Hitler rose to power. The story about a chamaeleon-like actor who smoothly forms alliances with any authorities is becoming disturbingly topical in other times. The movie by István Szabó directed in 1981 was interpreted as a commentary on regimes in Eastern Europe of the time.

The Mephisto premiere, which took place in the Powszechny Theatre in 1983, rose from the memory about the martial law and the attitidues of artists towards the government at the time of Polish People’s Republic (PRL). In 2017, Mephisto is performed in a theatre in which the nationalists hurl their flares, a theatre stigmatised from the pulpits or rostrums in the Parliament; a theatre whose entrance is protected by the police to maintain security. All this in a country in which a decision to appear in public media is burdened with dillemas we have only known from the history.

“Don’t panick. Keep a sharp mind...” – Hendrik Höfgen comments on the fears of his friends ­– oppositionists. Are we all Höfgens? Can we become them at any time? Where does compromise end? Where does opportunism begin? If we mark this border, will we be consolidated in our feeling of moral superiority? Or maybe this is an attempt to save whathever dignity it has left? Who is or wants to be a Wallenrod, who wants to be invincible? And what courpses are lying around in the wardrobe of contemporary self-appointed non-conformists?

For adults only.

The premiere of a performance at the Art and Society Festival Happy City.